


ghosts

by kittenscully



Series: fictober 2020 [21]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: (multiple canonical ones), F/M, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, POV Dana Scully, Post-Episode: s06e10 Tithonus, Romance, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: Selfishness is not holy. There is no purpose to a doctor who, when surrounded by the dying on all sides, can only manage to save herself.[fictober day 21]
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: fictober 2020 [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949467
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Do I have to do everything here?"

It’s faint beeping of her own vitals on the machine that wakes her. 

Her first thought upon opening her eyes: the entirely unpeaceful state of being alive, and the finality of its opposite. The myth of the restless dead. There is no such thing as ghosts, only the love that lives on even after the stilling of a heart. 

Then, she wonders at the hour.

Through the unsteady framerate of the codeine, she can make out the hints of dawn in the window beside the bed. In hospitals, time slides by like molasses, all hours the same hour. The carousel of day and night are a distant attraction, irrelevant to all but those on their way out, whether by the front doors or the morgue.

On the other side, Mulder. Chair pulled up close to her cot, tie and jacket haphazard across the back. Oxford rolled up to his elbows. 

Against all odds, he’s fallen asleep sitting up, cheek squished against his fist like a little kid. 

Scully wants to reach for him, smooth his hair. He’s turned it spiky with his worry, his disregard for himself. But her body is unresponsive, too drained of energy to trigger her muscle movement even when she tries. 

She doesn’t want to leave him uncared for, not even for a moment. But under the circumstances, belly aching even through a dose of painkillers heavy enough to kill a small mammal, she’ll forgive herself for her inaction.

By all rational standards, she ought to have bled out, exited through the side doors into calm waters. She knows it as well as every doctor who’s seen her, has heard nurses whispering in awe through the foggy coastline of her consciousness. 

How saintly, to be twice over the subject of her own miracles. And how unsaintly, to cheat her way out of the ensuing martyrdom each time.

Selfishness is not holy. There is no purpose to a doctor who, when surrounded by the dying on all sides, can only manage to save herself. 

There is no such thing as ghosts, only those who are absent in life. Fellig, Boggs, Bruckman. Only those who walk through life already dead, and the shades of those who loved and were loved deeply, those who will be missed fiercely in death. 

She thinks of her father, her sister, seated echoes in her living room. She suspects that there’s no room in Heaven for someone who refuses to go with grace. She wonders if she will die at all, or if Bruckman had been right, now that she carries Fellig’s curse.

Vaguely, she elects not to tell Mulder. To see her as anything but sacred, to truly understand the way the earth holds her down, would destroy his fragile system of faith. 

It’s ironic and endearing, the way he rejects religion, only to construct his own. 

The creeping blanket of unconsciousness threatens to pull her under, and she blinks lazily, wanting the company of her own unshapely thoughts for awhile longer. 

A flurry of activity outside her room shakes off the impending sleep, the telltale metallic screech of the code cart and low, panicked voices.

Mulder stirs, and she resents the intrusion into their peace. 

“Scully?” he mumbles, searching for her before he even opens his eyes. 

The injury wasn’t to her chest, but she feels pressure there anyway. The tireless push-pull of loving him the way she does, simultaneously weighing on her and opening her from the inside out. 

“Mmm,” she hums, making another effort to lift her hand and, blessedly, succeeding. 

Under her fingers, his forehead is damp, and he looks up at her, laden with the disorientation of sleep. 

“Scully,” he says again, this time achingly tender. “Hey.”

As she watches, he comes back to himself, catching her palm and clasping it between his. 

“You okay?”

She wants to comfort him, needs to, but she can’t find the strength to form words, and the frustration builds up behind her eyes. 

“Hey, that’s okay,” he soothes, quickly. Presses his lips to the back of her hand, so gentle that she worries she’ll break under the touch. “You don’t have to talk.”

His coat will carry the acrid scent of antiseptic for weeks, lingering like guilt. He will fear for her life at every turn. But she imagines him, shattered instead by grief, rubble and ruins in the wake of her death, and decides that the array of small unpleasant things is vastly preferable.

The entirely unpeaceful state of being alive, she recalls. There is no such thing as ghosts, no existence on the mortal plane after the end.

She knows that Mulder believes in them. She knows, too, that he only believes because he doesn’t understand what it is that he’s believing in. Understanding destroys faith, transforms it into the act of knowing, intentional, sourced from within and not without. 

He only believes, she knows, because he’s never truly seen one. 

“Do you need more painkillers?” Mulder asks, as if he’s already forgotten that he told her not to talk. She blinks at him, amused even in her disorientation. 

“What, do I have to do everything here, even answer my own questions?” He comments, a halfhearted attempt at a joke, and then shakes his head. “You can just tap on my hand, yeah? Once for yes, and twice for no.” 

And Scully taps, two times. Watches him nod, earnest and sweet, weary to the bone. If she could, she’d tell him to come closer, rest with his head on her chest, the pain a reward for the victory of staying alive and wanting to be, a reminder of her continued presence in her own body.

He wouldn’t do it anyway, too afraid of what it could mean. 

“How about some water?”

Again, twice for no. The IV has kept her hydrated, and liquid in her throat would only remind her of her inability to speak.

“Okay,” he says. He kisses her knuckles for the second time. “I’m right here if you change your mind.”

She taps once. Manages, barely, to smile at him. If she could, she would tell him to relax, and let sleep pull him under again as she watched over him.

In the pale weakness of dawn, she loves him with the kind of finality that haunts. She loves him enough to stay alive, to be unholy. To make sure he won’t ever see her ghost. 

She loves him enough to let him believe. 


End file.
